Rotary and Sukuta by John Walker

There are almost daily reports in the UK press about how charities have suffered financially during the COVID pandemic, as funds have dried up and donors cut back. SSS, in its own small way, has been no different. School lockdowns have meant we have lost our largest single source of income this year, the fund-raising efforts of the ever-generous Beech Hill school in Luton. Some of our biggest backers have either cut back or diverted their funds to perhaps more pressing problems during the year.

But, to the rescue has come Rotary International!

The Rotary Club of Redbridge has been a regular supporter of SSS over the last four or five years, and clearly liked what they have seen in terms of feedback and the evidence of generous donations being put to good and effective use.

John of SSS became a member about eighteen months ago and the club has encouraged us to spread our wings within the Rotary family in seeking support for our efforts with Gambian education.

As mentioned in the previous two posts, we have addressed most of the major infrastructure challenges that required fixing at the Sohm primary school (electrifying the school, upgrading the staff quarters, renovating the toilets, regenerating the school’s library, increasing the water supply and access, revamping a sick room, refurbishing a six-classroom block and finally building a brand new multi-purpose hall).

Our key contact at Sohm, deputy head, Lamin Saidy had been transferred to a similar post in the country’s largest primary school, in Sukuta – essentially a suburb of the country’s biggest urban sprawl, Serekunda – where he found similar problems of infrastructure neglect.

Together, and with the encouragement of the school’s leadership, staff, PTA governors and local education director, we put together an ambitious nine-point plan, spelled out in the previous post:

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Double water tank capacity

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Greatly increase the number of water supply standpipes

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Renovate unhealthy toilets

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Build the school’s first sick room

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Bring the dilapidated library back into use

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Build a covered area for food suppliers

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Increase the size of the school’s computer room

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Restore the out-of-bounds school hall, and

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Create the school’s first staff room

Rotary International is a huge organisation, dedicated to charity, with clubs in almost all countries world-wide. Each club is semi-autonomous in terms of fund-raising activity and charity giving; but the collective efforts of Rotary have been amazing.

We have constructed a complex structure of mainly Rotary-based funding arrangements that will finance most of the £60,000 required to pay for the Sukuta project, transforming The Gambia’s largest primary school into one that is fit-for-purpose in facing the challenges of the 2020s.

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A Comment On the Sukuta Project by Les May

THE most striking thing about the recent piece by John Walker on the Sukuta Project which intends to renovate the Gambia’s largest primary school is the relatively small amount of money, £60,000, which will be needed to accomplish a project which will benefit 2,000 children immediately and go on benefiting similar sized cohorts for many years to come.

In July 2020, I wrote an article for NV with the title ‘Why Black Lives Matter Will Fail’. Something I wrote at the end of that piece seems pertinent here.

In the article I mentioned a disclaimer which read ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’

If you check out the website https://uk.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund which appears to be the group referred to in the disclaimer, you will find passages like ‘a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people’ and ‘we lift up the experiences of the most marginalised in our communities, including but not limited to working class queer, trans, undocumented, disabled, Muslim, sex workers, women/non-binary, HIV+ people.’

You’ll also find the group have been given £1.2 million by 35,000 donors. At the risk of being tedious I will mention that this sum would change the lives of almost 7500 black children in Africa who were born with a cleft palate and face a lifetime of ridicule and social isolation, or pay for nearly 75,000 ingrowing eye lash operations or nearly seven and a half million doses of a drug to cure trachoma and prevent this many black people going blind.

Clearly all those donors have different priorities to mine.

£1.2 million would fund 20 similar projects in Africa meaning that 40,000 black children would benefit immediately and would be followed by the same number of children benefiting long into the future.

As someone recently wrote to me, ‘organisations like BLM are more concerned about displaying sentiments rather than addressing issues.’

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Renovating the Gambia's largest primary school! by John Walker

A couple of years ago we had raised the funds to commission our most ambitious project in Sohm, the building of the new school hall, and felt that once it was complete, we could switch off our charity’s fund-raising engine, take the hand break off and slowly cruise down-hill in future years at the Lower Basic school.

And so, on time, budget and target, a year later, the multi-function hall (assembly, gym, dining room, prayer room, village meeting room etc.) was opened, with much local fanfare and celebration. We felt very pleased – bordering on smug - at the achievement.

New hall at Sohm - ourmost successful project - to date!

But something was missing. It was our key contact at the school, with whom we had worked successfully on all of our other projects over the years: bringing electricity to the school, renovating the teachers’ accommodation, rebuilding dangerous and unhealthy toilets, restoring a library made unusable by the ravages of termites, renovating a broken six-classroom block, adding water standpipes, building a new sick room and providing PCs and stationery each year etc.

Lamin Saidy, the ever-reliable, unassuming but determined deputy head teacher and rock upon which our efforts had depended was not there to celebrate the hall opening, because he was busy in his new job. The Gambian education authorities had spotted his talents and transferred him to become deputy head teacher in the country’s largest primary school – with over 2,000 pupils. It was a great move for Lamin: promotion and fresh challenges in a less isolated location.

Lamin Saidy, ex-deputy head at Sohm, now at Sukuta

But it wasn’t all positive. He must have groaned when he saw the state of the place. Like Sohm Lower Basic, his new school in Sukuta was about forty years old and had suffered neglect, due to lack of funding from incompetent/corrupt governments for most of that period. The same deficiencies were obvious: insufficient water storage and standpipes, dangerously unhealthy toilets, a lack of safe eating area for children’s lunches, a library made inoperable because of termite attacks and cramped accommodation.

In some ways it was worse. There was no sick room in a school with 2,000 youngsters, many of whom were undernourished and would suffer fainting episodes in the sweltering heat, others who faced regular bouts of malaria, older girls with nowhere to go when menstruating for the first time. Never mind the lack of facilities to deal with the scrapes, cuts and bruises that would attend normal playground accidents for any large group of children aged 4 – 12.

No sick room at Sukuta - but there is a space crying out for one to be built in it!

The school hall was structurally damaged and out of bounds and there was no hygienic area in which to serve school meals, nor a staff room for a school with over 70 staff. The school was lucky in some respects, another UK charity had supplied it with a number of perfectly serviceable computers, but the only secure and relatively dust-free room was too small to accommodate them all. Children missed out on ICT lessons, not through lack of equipment, but due to a lack of appropriate accommodation.

To be fair to the new (three years old) government in The Gambia, they have begun to address the infrastructural neglect of the country’s education system. But they face a dilemma with an inevitably limited budget: repair the damaged buildings of the past, or build for the future? The country, in common with most of Africa, has a young population with an ever-increasing demand for school places. The government cannot afford to both renovate and build for the future. For wholly understandable reasons, they have largely embarked on the latter. So long-time neglect will continue to be evident, as priority spending is focused on the new build.

Dilemma for government: restore old facilities, like damaged water suppy (foreground), or build for future with new classrooms (background)?

We visited Lamin in his new school and he and the head gave us a guided tour. It was déjà vu on the dilapidation front and almost dispiriting.

Back in the UK, almost out of the blue, Rotarian friends of ours began to sow seeds. Why not apply to Rotary international, and see if funds can be forthcoming to help at Sukuta?

The seeds germinated during the lock-down period of COVID – in The Gambia and UK - and a year later the first signs of healthy growth are evident, as we embark on a complete renovation of the largest primary school in The Gambia – at a cost of £60,000!

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The only library in the school of 2,000 pupils is out of use because of termite infestation Most of the pieces of the financial and organisational jigsaw are in now in place as we hope to launch the project in the summer and complete the transformation of the school within twelve months. To return to the motoring metaphor, the fund-raising engine has been re-ignited and we have embarked on a long journey with a few bumps on the way. School lunches provided by local women from stalls without access to water or shelter - breeds disease This is the first of three fortnightly blogs on the Sukuta project – so watch out for further installments explaining what the project involves and how we have arranged (most of!) the funding for it. And finally, in this mini-series, we will provide a fourth blog: “Not forgetting Sohm”, explaining how we have continued to support the Lower Basic School in the village that first inspired the establishment of our charity. John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

Rochdale's Reputation for Cover-ups

ON Wed 18 Mar 2015 a former editor of Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP), John Walker, wrote a piece in The Guardian entitled 'Our Cyril Smith story came out in 1979. What followed was a 36-year cover-up':

'Finally the hunt is on to nail those responsible for aborting police inquiries into the child sex abuse allegations against the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith and other – as yet unnamed – establishment figures from the 1970s and 1980s. But his abuses have been covered up and ignored for over 35 years. Why should the victims feel that anything much has changed in recent days'...

'I write as co-editor of the Rochdale Alternative Paper, which in May 1979 published a 2,000 word article, quoting in graphic detail from the testimonies of boys Smith had sexually abused a decade and a half earlier. The article was cleared legally by three prominent lawyers, on a pro-bono basis. They went through every word with a view to potential libel pitfalls. On legal advice we sought Smith’s comments prior to publication. We received none directly: only a bungled “gagging” writ, which failed to prevent publication...

'Rochdale council made Smith a freeman of the borough, named a room in the town hall after him and, in a ceremony attended by the current MP Simon Danczuk, put up a blue plaque in his honour – now taken down, apparently to prevent vandalism. More rubbing the noses of many victims in their misery, on their home patch.'

The conclusion John Walker came to in 2015 was:

'Smith had got away with it. He increased his parliamentary majority and, emboldened by his escape from justice, possibly continued his abuse of pubescent boys for two decades. Action in 1979 could have stopped him in his tracks, and prevented abuse and misery for future victims. Files on Smith’s child abuse were passed around police forces and the security services in the 1970s and 1980s – with no prosecutions. More covering up and inaction, instead of an end to his abuse.'

On that occasion following the emergence of the first Jimmy Savile revelations in 2012, Northern Voices and Paul Waugn then of the Politics Home site (now of the Huff Post) interviewed several of Smith's victims ultimately resulting in Channel 4’s Dispatches programme running an episode on Smith. Which Walker says 'did justice to the subject, but was allotted a ludicrous graveyard airing slot'.

Editorial Observation:

In recent times the case of the self-confessed electoral fraud Cllr. Faisal Rana and his surprising rise to power on Rochdale Council, has followed a pattern parelling the cover-ups involving Cyril Smith. A former CID officer told me that a report on Smith had been sent to the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) but had come back as 'Not in the Public Interest'. Similarly complaints have been ongoing about Cllr. Faisal Rana and it seems that the Rochdale police may have toned-down their report to the CPP and have failed to emphasis that it may have involved postal vote fraud which would require a prison sentence.

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Cyril Smith and Faisal Rana

by Les May

NOT two names you would ever expect to see together, but as I was reminded when I read the somewhat garbled story by Jennifer Williams in the Saturday edition of the Rochdale Observer, there are some remarkable similarities.

Let’s forget the speculation and recap what we actually know. Smith indecently assaulted young men at the Cambridge House hostel in the 1960s.  Had he not been guilty of this he would have sued Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) for the article in the May 1979 edition.  Rana voted twice in the May 2018 local government election. When found out he admitted it. Two guilty men; two sets of blind eyes being turned.

What are the similarities?   For a start neither of these men ever stood in the dock and answered for their crimes, though the reasons for this appear very different. Another similarity is the way that people who could, and should, have taken non-judicial actions against these two guilty men have excused their reasons for not doing so.

David Steel who was told of these accusations against Smith by the RAP editors, David Bartlett and John Walker, has excused his inaction by saying;

‘These allegations all related to a period some years before he was even an MP and before he was even a member of the party, therefore it did not seem to me that I had any position in the matter at all. He accepted that the story was correct. Obviously I disapproved, but as far as I was concerned it was past history.’

How remarkably similar this is to the response I received when I raised the matter of Rana voting twice with the RMBC monitoring officer.  I was told that Rana’s criminal behaviour had taken place before he became a Councillor, hence no action could be taken.  Just as party leader Steel was able to avoid taking any action against Smith, these seems to have been enough to have allowed party leader Alan Brett to avoid taking action against Rana.

In fact the excuse from the monitoring officer was nonsense.  Rana’s crime was committed on polling day 3 May 2018 and his term of office runs from that day until the day before the next poll is held.  I feel justified in using the term ‘excuse’ here because when I later asked for clarification about Rana’s failure to declare his interests within the stipulated time period the officer who dealt with this during an extensive correspondence squirmed and did everything possible to avoid having to admit that Rana had failed to comply with the rules.

So why did neither of these men appear in the dock?  We know that in the case of Smith the police pursued a rigorous investigation, that the file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and that no action was taken against Smith.  No evidence has yet been produced that this was a ‘cover up’ and the most likely explanation is that even though a number of young men has made similar accusations against Smith as the law stood at the time this could not be taken as corroboration that he committed the crimes he was accused of.  This seems absurd to us now and the law has since been changed.

In the case of Rana things are much less clear. We don’t know whether the decision to allow him off the hook with only a caution was taken by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) without referring the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or whether it was a decision made by the CPS.   If the decision was made by GMP alone then it seems to me to be a significant error of judgement on someone’s part.

Voter fraud strikes at the heart of our democracy and whether it be GMP, the CPA, a council officer or a party leader no one should do anything which appears to excuse or condone it.  Smith is dead, Steel is yesterday’s man and Rana is still a councillor. Which do you think we should be most concerned about?

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2019/03/what-rap-said-about-smith-in-1979.html

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Beech Hill School Gambia Day

by John Walker

BEECH Hill Community Primary School, Luton - which is twinned with Sohm Lower Basic school - recently held their second "Gambia Day" and raised over £2,000 for their linked school in The Gambia.

Beech Hill's 2019 Gambia Day: some of the pupils  "modelling" African masks we took for the occasion,  all suitably dressed in Gambian flag colours, and  supervised by SSS's Sandra Walker,  sporting her Gambian top

It was a "non-uniform" day in the school, and pupils were encouraged to go dressed in the red, blue and green colours of The Gambian flag. Sandra and John Walker, of Sohm Schools Support lead assemblies for the 900 pupils at the school, and were in attendance all day, sharing stories and watching the Luton children hard at work

Beech Hill pupils, hard at work,  creating Gambian flags

The day's school work was turned over to Gambia-related topics, as students wrote postcards home to their parents, based on an imaginary holiday in the tourist country of The Gambia. Other children drew and painted African scenes, from materials shown to them by our charity and accessed on the internet. There were African dance, song and story telling sessions; and at the end of the day some of the pupils' parents sold curries and other food, from donated products, with the proceeds going to the Gambian school.

Painting and cutting out masks

Over £2,000 was raised on the day, bringing the total fund raising efforts of Beech Hill's pupils, parents and staff to over £8,000 over the last two years.

Natalie Carson, deputy head of Beech Hill said: "The Sohm story has really captured the imagination of our pupils and parents, who have been delighted to help. I visited the school in The Gambia about 5 years ago, and know what a huge difference our students' efforts will make to improving the educational chances of these African youngsters. The Gambia work is great for extending our children's education and appreciation of the ways of life of people their same age in other countries."

Some of the staff at Beech Hill have recently put a huge amount of work into creating an exhibition for the school's foyer, showing pupils and parents, alike, the results of some of the school-twinning.

Beech Hill's Sohm exhibition -  pride of place in the school foyer

The exhibition shows: Sohm and Luton's youngsters work celebrating the twinning. There are "before" and "after" photos of the difference Luton's fund-raising has made to projects in Sohm. There are press cuttings of some of the excellent coverage Beech Hill has received from Luton Today.

A key feature of the exhibit is the "building blocks of progress", this shows how far Beech Hill has come in raising its target of £10,000 for The Gambian school. Sohm School Support trustee, Sandra Walker said: 

We are able to get "matched funding" from others for Beech Hill's efforts, which means we can soon start construction on our most ambitious project: a 30 metre hall and kitchen for Sohm Lower Basic school. This will replace a dangerous and dilapidated dining hall that was not fit for purpose.

And ... the money raised by Beech Hill,  to date - in excess of £8,000 - well placed  to hit their £10,000 target by 2020.

The new building will be multi-functional and act as a dining hall, gym, meeting room, assembly hall, prayer room and the village's first community hall. It will last until the Beech Hill students are themselves parents of primary school pupils in Luton. What a fabulous present and legacy they are giving to their Gambian friends! 

Meanwhile, we undertake to keep you updated, as progress is made on the construction of the new building and hope to be there for its opening in the new year, which we will record and share on this site. 

John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

David Steel: MP's assault on lads in Rochdale

by Brian Bamford

LORD Steel, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, has today been suspended by the party owing to his admission made to a child abuse inquiry about how he handled allegations about the late Rochdale MP Cyril Smith in 1979.

Yesterday the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard that no formal inquiry was held by the Lib Dem party into the claims against Smith, which were investigated by the police in  1969 but no prosecution was ever brought.

Addressing the the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday (13 March), Lord Steel said he discussed the allegations with Smith in 1979, after reading a report claiming Smith had abused boys at Rochdale’s Cambridge House Hostel when he was a Labour MP.
Lord Steel said:  'What I said to him was, "What's all this about you in Private Eye?", and he said, rather to my surprise, "It is correct", that he had been in charge of - or had some supervisory role in a children's hostel, that he'd been investigated by the police, and that they had taken no further action, and that was the end of the story.'

[Editor:  Lord Steel is wrong in describing Cambridge House as a 'children's hostel'; it was in fact hostel for teenage lads of working age]

At the time he was abusing his powers over the lads at Cambridge House, Cyril Smith had also been serving as a prominent and influential Labour councillor in Rochdale in the 1960s before later becoming the Liberal and then Liberal Democrat MP for the town between 1972 and 1992.

Labour Councilor assaulted lads at Cambridge House

The claims that Smith had abused his powers by inflicting corporal punishment upon some teenage lads at Cambridge House Hostel in the 1960s innitially appeared in the monthly paper Rochdale's Alternative Paper in May 1979, and these claims were later given national prominence in Private Eye.  In 2012, these allegations  got extensive media coverage after Northern Voices and John Walker former editor of RAP, and Paul Waugh of the Politics Home website, prevailed upon the then Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk to include Smith's activities at Cambridge House in his planned parliamentary speech on the sexual grooming of young girls.


Lord Steel also described how he recommended Smith for a knighthood in 1988 and said that he did not pass on any allegations about the sexual abuse of children because 'I was not aware of any such allegations other than the matter referred to…which appeared to have been fully investigated'.
And he said it had not occurred to him that children could still have been at risk from Smith.

'He admitted to me that the report was correct in that he had been investigated by the police at the time and no action taken against him.
'I had already told the inquiry in writing that in my opinion he had been abusing his position in Rochdale Council [that is to gain access to council-run children's homes], but that had been properly a matter for the police and the council, and not for me as he was neither an MP nor even a member of the Liberal Party at the time.
'I was in no position to re-open the investigation.'

 Lord Steel also described recommending Smith for a knighthood in 1988 and said he did not pass on any allegations about the sexual abuse of children because 'I was not aware of any such allegations other than the matter referred to…which appeared to have been fully investigated.'

The allegations that appeared in RAP and Private Eye in 1979, to which Lord Steel appears to be refering to, focused on claims of assault against the lads at Cambridge House rarther than the sexual matters that have been more recently developed in relation to Knowl View.

Lord Steel's nomination of Cyril Smith for Knighthood

In a statement released on Thursday afternoon commenting on the media reporting of the Inquiry, Lord Steel said::  'I am reinforced in my view by reading the previous report of the inquiry sent to me today, which says inter alia 'the Crown Prosecution Service found that the advice which had previously been given could not be faulted (given the law and guidance in place at the time)' and that the honours scrutiny committee had seriously considered his nomination for a knighthood and sent a 'warning of risk' letter to Margaret Thatcher as PM, and that 'clearly she took a similar view' as he was granted the knighthood.
'It is unfortunate that some sections of the media have chosen to extract certain passages of evidence and present them without the full context.
'The inquiry has a serious and sensitive job to undertake and spinning evidence to generate sensationalist headlines only serves to distract from panel's search of the truth.'
 
Lord Steel became the Liberal MP for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles in 1965, and became the party's leader in 1976 after the resignation of Jeremy Thorpe, who later stood trial on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder.

He was elected as an MSP when the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999, and was appointed as the parliament's first presiding officer.  He has been a life peer in the House of Lords since 1997.

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The Gambia - quick update on progress!

by John & Sandra Walker

OUR most successful visit to Sohm, to date, will be the feature of a series of articles over the coming months.  The achievements of the trip, however, can be expressed in 10 headlines and photos, below.

1. Given a great welcome by the school.

2. Witnessed transformed classroom block, courtesy of the generosity of pupils from Beech Hill school, Luton and Redbridge Rotary Club.

3. Saw superb delivery of First Aid training to 10 adults and three pupils, plus the delivery of upto date stock of medical supplies, from the ever-excellent First Aid 4 Gambia.

4. Signed off plans for a new 30 metre hall and kitchen block - our biggest project yet - to be built this year.

5. Delivered £1k+ of stationery to meet all needs of 450 pupils and their staff for the next year.

6. Saw delighted pupils and teachers captivated by some Jolly Phonics DVD's, we took over - courtesy of some e.bay bargains in the UK

7. Picked up over 90 letters, drawings and photos from the pupils to take to their pen pals in Luton.

8. Sourced potential furniture - with ideas of how to pay for it - for the new hall, for next year.

9. Spoke to Banjul Rotary Club, about possible future co-operation.

10. Tracked down possible future training packages for the staff at Sohm Lower Basic School.

Future blogs will add flesh to the bones of the above achievements.

As ever, we welcome your comments and donations - to help us continue to change lives in the small Gambian village of Sohm.

John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

Cllr. Rowbotham, Big Cyril & Single Issue Politics

by Brian Bamford

ON the 5th, December Carl Faulkner, an independent analyst and investigator concerned about the decline of common decency in local political life, published a video skillfully outlining the attitude of most Rochdale councillors to the importance of democratic procedures in local politics.  The video entitled 'Birds of a feather:  Protecting the Guilty' * and commenting on the Rochdale  full council meeting of Oct. 2018, that  describes in detail how councillors of a Labour complexion gave spirited support to one of their brethren who is a self-confessed fraudster using postal ballots to vote more than once in the last municipal elections in Rochdale.

This artfully designed video superbly captures the depth to which Rochdale politics has sunk, with the now disgraced Council leader Allen Brett calling on the Council to let the culprit fraudster, councillor Faisal Rana, be 'allowed to continue his good work'.  Councillor Brett was responding to a formal motion from the Tory leader of the opposition inviting Councillor Rana to 'just reflect on the positon that he's in and the position that he's put the Borough in'.

The Rochdale Labour councillors are by now well immune to controversy and scandal having endured pantomime politics for decades under the tutelage of such tacticians as Simon Danczuk, Richard Farnell, and now Allen Brett.  Perhaps we ought to mention that at the time the tragedy of Cambridge House was in being as a going concern in the 1960s, Cyril Smith was a big noise in the Rochdale Labour Party.

The now disgraced Council leader Allen Brett is merely the ultimate conclusion of a rather bad bunch.  Alongside him Sara Rowbotham cuts a curious figure as his deputy, it was she who rose to fame when Maxine Peak portrayed her in the 'Three Girls' dramatisation on TV.  She is interesting because she has a following among a campaign group called 'Parents Against Grooming' or PAG.**

PAG supporters were out in force at the Council meeting at which Allen Brett defended the self-confessed fraud Faisal Rana.  But they were clearly less interest on electoral swindling than on the exploits of a dead man in the last century at Cambridge House etc.  Historical memory is not to be ignored, as we know that even today that Spaniards are anxious to unearth the bones of victims of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.  If the supporters of PAG want to explore and campaign for what they call the 'survivors' of Cyril Smith they are entitled to do so.

What is worrying is that in doing so, and pursuing a single issue, the PAG campaigners  may be overlooking what is now under their own noses:  that is that they themselves may be being used as 'useful idiots' by an ambitious politician to feather her own nest.  I can't say this for certain, but their own heroine Sara Rowbotham has gone on record of making allegations against other Rochdale councillors, yet at the meeting PAG attended Sara had no qualms about joining the 'Roll of Shame' and backing the electoral fraud, Faisal Rana.

In this respect by getting carried away with the virtue signals and grandstanding of these half-baked ambitious politicians aren't you being a bit myopic?   Before you start to 'Look Back in Anger', just consider that I was one of those folding RAP in the cellar on Spotland Road, when in May 1979 the allegations against Cyril Smith at Cambridge House were first about to be put into the public domain.  Also, this Northern Voices Blog together with John Walker former joint editor of RAP; the Westminster Blogger, Paul Waugh; and the much lamented former Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk,   created the conditions for PAG to exist after Danczuk made his speech in Parliament in 2012 (see the excerpt from the Northern Voices Blog archive in November 2012 below).***

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*    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFKrkQaKqw&feature=youtu.be

** See the video link in which Sara Rowbotham denounces Councillor Allen Brett entitled

'3 BOYS , A GIRL AND A GROOMER ROCHDALE COUNCIL PART 5': 
PART 5 OF SURVIVORS MATTERS EXPLANATION AS TO WHY ROCHDALE BOROUGH COUNCIL HAVE REPEATEDLY MADE PROMISES TO THEM ONLY TO LEAD SURVIVORS ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE , WHILST ROCHDALE COUNCIL TRYING TO PORTRAY ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND CHANGE

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9gXUO6bK0qRQxCqmjKBenQ

***   Monday, 19 November 2012

It Was The Voices That Did It!

Cyril Smith - the Legend Falls

LAST WEEK, Northern Voices was party with others to the opening up of a story that has lied in the shadows for decades.   We cannot claim all the credit as we did not do the original research into Cyril Smith:  that was performed by the editors of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) in May 1979, when they first published the story and were threatened by Cyril Smith's solicitors at the time with a 'gagging writ'.  Private Eye and the New Statesman followed through with reports but the case against 'Smith the Man' was killed before it reached the mainstream media.  Later attempts to resurrect the story also failed because those giving evidence against Sir Cyril Smith lacked the confidence to put their names in the public domain. 

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"Sohm 2020" NEWSLETTER

  Below is the latest newsletter from Sohm Schools Support. In it you will find details of some very real recent successes and our most ambitious project yet: Sohm 2020. This is our project to raise £20k by 2020, in order to completely refurb 6 classrooms and demolish a condemned school kitchen and dining area, and replace it with a fit for purpose multi-functional school hall.

WE are delighted to announce the launch of "Sohm 2020", our drive to raise £20,000 over the next two years to fulfil two extremely ambitious projects.

Our sights have been raised as a result of an extremely fulfilling partnership we have struck with Beech Hill Primary school in Luton. 

We have also been encouraged by help from some other very generous donors and a working arrangement with a Swedish charity in The Gambia, that specialises in training and employing Gambian construction labour to work on not-for-profit projects, at cost price.

Our Beech Hill partnership

Beech Hill primary school in Luton is a large school in a modest, mainly Muslim area of the town. Its recently appointed deputy head, Natalie Carson, is daughter of SSS co-founder, Sandra Walker.  Natalie has previously worked with SSS in Sohm, when five years ago she and a colleague, undertook some training of teachers in the Gambian village.

Friendship cemented in Sohm  with Beech Hill school, Luton

In her new role, in Luton, she has persuaded the school to "adopt" the Lower Basic school in Sohm. This will involve developing twinning arrangements, exchanging correspondence with individual pupils, exchanging curriculum materials and helping to fund raise on behalf on Sohm LBS. 

Beech Hill has already raised almost £1,500 for Sohm in the six months since the arrangement was agreed, and has committed itself to assist the school for upto three years. Sohm has also adopted the twinning enthusiastically, as the photo, above - taken in February - shows.

Beech Hill has other, exciting, twinning and fund raising events planned over the following months - and we will keep you up to speed on their progress.

Initial target - met!

Over the last year, our charity efforts have been focused on raising enough money to completely refurb and re-furnish a broken down classroom in a decaying block of six at the Lower Basic school.  Supporters have generously provided us with the £2,500 we felt necessary to undertake this task. And we thank them (they know who they are!), very sincerely for their generosity.

The six photos in this sequence  are of some of the damage to the  walls in the classrooms which will  be fixed, via steel girder supports in the six classrooms

Above and below - close ups of the  extent of the damage to the  walls, on the photo, two up

Your generosity will also pay to  replace the broken classroom  furniture, desks and chairs

Termite damage has made this, the  door to the deputy head's office,  unusable.  This will be fixed by September

We have, in fact, been able to raise twice that amount for this project! 

In January we were given an estimate, by the government's education building surveyor for refurbish and re-equipping the whole six-classroom block. We have given the spec to the local Swedish/Gambian charity, mentioned above and they have given us a cost price quotation for the work.

Working on a "matched-funding" basis with our colleagues from Jersey, we are delighted to announce that we have now collected enough to restore the whole six classroom block, and an office within it!

Work will commence at the end of the summer term and we hope everything will be complete in time for the pupils' return to school in September.

More innovative funding

Until two years ago we had free container space to ship donated items out to The Gambia.  This arrangement enabled us to take, among other items, a whole classroom computer suite, with associated equipment.

Stationery: donated ...

The "free passage" offer has, unfortunately ended. One of our long-time supporters, forgetful of this, however, donated a large supply of unwanted stationery to us, as he was closing down his stationery business. It would have been ideal for the children in Sohm - but the commercial transportation costs of getting it there would have been greater than it was realistically worth to the schools in the village.

... and transported.  That's another  classroom refurb paid for!

A generous, local-to-us, retailer stepped in and offered to buy the stock from us.  Friends and colleagues transported it free.  Result? Another few hundred pounds to help restore the classrooms! Thanks to all concerned in that transaction - on behalf of the children of Sohm Lower Basic school!

The big one!

Flushed with success, and some certainty about future levels of funding, we began exploratory talks, while in the Gambia earlier this year, about embarking on our most ambitious-to-date project. The demolition of the school's decrepit, unusable, 35-year old school kitchen and dining hall and replacement with a fit-for-purpose facility.

Above and below: the existing, but condemned  kitchen and dining room, from outside.  Note the interesting curvature of the roof!

It has been condemned and out of use for three years now. Even when it was operational the 'dining area' was inflexible, as the "furniture" consisted of immovable concrete blocks. In the absence of a proper kitchen and dining room, children have to make to with pieces of bread, dipped in a sauce, from outside stalls in the school grounds.

Complete with dilapidated windows - above - and holes in the wall (not ATM's unfortunately)  - below- you can put your fist through

Once more, we got the schools' building inspector to give us a price for demolition of the building and the reconstruction of a kitchen area and multi-functional hall.  The initial estimate is £20,000, inclusive.

The hall will have movable tables and chairs - so it can still be used as a dining area, and so much more.

The current kitchen area, above, with a close-up, below, of the cement units in which wood is  burned to heat the pots to cook the rice

The furniture can be moved to one side - so offering the school its first ever: assembly hall, indoor gym, meetings room, performance area and prayer room.

Above - the condemned dining hall, with  immovable cement "furniture". Below the outdoor  "dining" arrangements the children are making  do with in the absence of the unfit dining hall

We aim to raise £10,000 over the next 18 months to pay for this - and so, with our Jersey partners, reach our £20k by '20 target.

Your help - as ever, would be much appreciated! And, as ever, we will keep you up-to-date on progress with the project.

 

John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen

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